


Maybe...

by gire_arga



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 06:15:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18911224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gire_arga/pseuds/gire_arga
Summary: Katniss struggles to understand she is not alone anymore. And that she has someone there to help her get better. This is set between the last chapter of Mockingjay and the Epilogue.





	Maybe...

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first story ever. I have no beta, so all errors are my own, and English is not my first language. That said, I thank anyone who takes the time to read this and any comment is welcomed. There is angst because I feel like Katniss struggled to come to terms that once Peeta came she was not alone anymore. I hope it translates well what I mean to say on this. If not, I'm sorry, let me know if any part is confusing? Anyway, the characters belong to amazing Suzanne Collins.

It's been two months since Peeta came back, since I woke up from the fogginess that covered my thoughts, since my nerve-endings became aware of how much that fog was covering up the pain and grieve. Sometimes I don't know how I can manage to breathe, how is it that my body has not gotten the idea that I'm dead inside, that I wish to be dead on the outside as well.

That first day, when I saw Peeta again I was so confused and shocked that I did not recognize this feeling inside me that is consuming me now. I feel such sorrow, and guilt. And each time I see Peeta, it all comes back to me, it's like a train set in motion that cannot be stopped. I see him, and I feel tremendous guilt, for what they did to him to break me, for what I did to him in order to not be broken, he is so calm, even now after all, each time he comes he brings an aura of peace and calmness that makes me want to crawl out of my skin because I feel anything but. 

So, I start to close myself off to him, he comes in the mornings, after I have come from hunting, we eat breakfast with Sae, sometimes they talk sometimes they don't, but I usually just listen. Too tired, and really what can I say that has any meaning now? I'm sorry? Too little, too late. Because a world with no ducktail in it is not a world I can see as something whole, or good so why bother talking about it?. A world where supposed-friends were nothing but an instinct of survival, where mothers forget they still have families when others don't even get to say that and where the best people had to go through the worst just to keep living. I try to remind myself that we live in a different world now, a better one. But for the life of me, today I can't seem to be able to grasp that concept. Maybe if I hadn't heard about Gail today while I was coming back from my usual morning in the woods, but I did and I remember everything so vividly that I cannot escape the past reality on my own now, which revolves around a dead sister. Maybe if Peeta, being the gentleman he is, was trying to give me space, because even without communicating it so to him, he felt that I was withdrawing and didn't want to push me. Maybe, maybe, maybe...

But, we will never know now. Because we don't live in a world of maybe, we live in a world of facts, and the fact is that I have several pills on my hand, most of them I don't know their purpose but I do know that I'm taking more than my fill for a couple of days. And the fact is, that I feel relieved. I take the pills and with a last sigh, I swallow them all. 

I guess I could have left letters, I have heard that was the custom thing to do on these cases, but I can't say I thought this through, I just did what it felt I needed to stop feeling everything I was. Or maybe I did think about this before and am just as selfish as everyone thought I was. It can be either way, but the fact is, that I'm beginning to feel really sleepy now, and can't summon the energy to write anything now. I guess selfish it is then.

And just as I am starting to be lifted into the darkness, I see him. Right there in front of me, and I think that this is the final reprieve from life to me, a gift, his face one more time before I go. And I embrace it.

But as it turns out, it wasn't a reprieve. Because first, I start feeling something stuck on my throat, making me gag until I can't breathe, this along with something rhythmically trying to make me spit out my longs by hitting me in the back, and a burning that goes up from my stomach to my mouth. And all I once I'm aware that I'm throwing up everything into the floor of my bathroom where I was just sitting before with someone forcing it out of me by hitting my back and introducing their fingers down my tongue. 

Once I feel some air in my lungs again I chance a peek up and come into view with the angriest Peeta I have ever seen in my life. Not even when he had his hands around my neck did I see such anger in him, I saw fear, desperation, and an almost animal instinct to fight, but not this pure raw rage. "What are you doing Katniss?!"

I find that I can't answer his shouts, so I just lower my gaze to something safer to watch, like his trembling hands which come up to me, but it isn't until I'm suddenly surrounded by his arms that I understand what they were meaning to do. I feel him all around me, something I haven't been able to feel in months and I'm thankful I came back even if this was the last embrace he ever gave me, because it feels so incredibly good that once again, I know I'm not going to be the first one to let go. I hear him whisper something, and first I can't decipher its meaning, then as I pay better attention I make out a faint "Please no, Katniss, don't do this. You can't, please." 

This is the final straw for me, and it's ironic that after all, fires, mutts, arenas full of monsters, even ghosts, this is what breaks me. I start sobbing so hard, that I can't keep myself from shaking and repeating over and over how sorry I am. Sometimes to him, sometimes to people that can't ever hear me again. And each time he just replies "Shhh, I know. I'm sorry too"

And for what can be hours or days, I just sit there, in Peeta's arms crying like a little girl, because for once I get to do just that, I get to fall apart and someone was there to catch me. Peeta keeps feeding me gentle words, his rage nowhere to be found now, it evaporated as fast as it came. And it's a wonder he has held me so close and hasn't had an episode, I guess he has come farther than I have realized, lost in my grief as I was.

Once I have settled, we come back to my bedroom where the light of midday is shining through the curtains. And it seems so foreign, that I could feel like that in such a beautiful day. And I still feel it, inside me, but it's no longer consuming me because now I feel like someone is lifting the weight with me. Somewhere along the tiles of the bathroom I understood that being as good as he is, Peeta also feels guilt like me, he also lost people, his family was killed indirectly because of him too, though it was really mostly my fault he still carries that on his shoulders and I feel like he can understand after all.

So, when I lift my face and find his there, waiting for me, with an arrangement of emotions on his face like sorrow, anger, empathy, and just general understanding I decide that maybe, I can keep on going as long as he walks along with me. Of course, the implications of this scare me, and instead, I just say "I felt so lonely"

"I know Katniss, I do too. Do you think it's easier for me? All my family is gone, I have nowhere else to go, not really. There are days where I just can't keep myself out of bed. But I do, and I'm here, and you are here and doesn't that counts for something?" I just keep staring at him, because I realize that yes, it does counts for something. It must, because otherwise what was the meaning of everything we went through? But, before I can reply, he continues "Can't we be lonely together, until we are not anymore? I know we can get better Katniss, Dr. Aurelius has taught me that I can get better, but most of all, being here has proved that to be right because each time I'm with you in the same and I don't get lost in my hijacking I feel that as a small victory. So, please just let me help. Take it one day at a time, and it'll become a week at a time, and then a month, and you'll see Katniss..."

"I'll see what?"

"That we can make it worth Katniss, everything that happened, we can give it meaning. Don't you see? That by doing this you throw all that away? There has to be a meaning Katniss!" And his pleads are so desperate, that it awakens my protectiveness of him.

"Ok," I say

"Ok?"

"Yes, Peeta. We can find its meaning together"

"Do you want breakfast?"

And just like that, we are back to our morning routine. We both know the magnitude of what I just did, and that we'll have to discuss it later. But we both also know that we are not nearly ready at the moment to do so without causing another breakdown in me or a flashback on him. I guess we were lucky it wasn't anything bloody or reminiscent of his torture days, otherwise, I think things wouldn't have had worked out as they did. For now, I'm just glad he found me, and that I found in him a companion for my burden. Even though he was there all along, I didn't understand that he could walk this path with me, that we could find understanding on each other again. Or that he would even want to. But I guess we are all each other has at the moment, and for now, that's all we need.

Weeks later, I find that we were wrong, we have so much more than just ourselves. Haymitch, by some miracle, starts appearing out of nowhere for dinners, and it becomes a thing. Sae keeps on coming for breakfast even after I'm well enough to start cooking, not every day, but enough to make it count each time she does. I find that Peeta was right, and Dr. Aurelius can help along the way, and I even start calling my mother which helps me comes to terms with everything that has happened, everyone who is not here but we fight hard to still make proud. There are still days where I feel in a black pit again, but Peeta is good now at figuring out what I need and when I need it. And I have found, that even with all my inadequacy at emotions I can read him quite well, so well that I also know when he is having a bad day or week, and in those moments I try harder to be of help. Sometimes it works, sometimes not so much. And because of this, I think that maybe, just maybe we will be able to make it through after all.

And there comes the day where that Maybe starts to become more and more blurry and gives wake to a Real.


End file.
